Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [241]
O’Brien confirmed that he had been contacted by Hagerty to represent the three television networks at about the same time he first met with Maheu, but claimed not to recall any discussion with Maheu of Hughes’s bid to take over ABC, as reported in Maheu’s memos. O’Brien also claimed he was not aware of the Hughes/ABC deal, although it was widely reported in the national press starting July 1, 1968, three days after Maheu first called, and three days before he came to Las Vegas to discuss the Hughes job.
O’Brien’s associate Claude DeSautels told the Senate Watergate Committee that Humphrey called while O’Brien was in Las Vegas. O’Brien said in an interview that shortly after he returned to Washington, he agreed to take over Humphrey’s campaign and told Maheu he could not go to work for Hughes until after the convention.
O’Brien confirmed that he met again with Maheu in Washington on July 31, 1968, received $25,000 promised to the Kennedy campaign, which he passed on to Smith the next day, and agreed to represent Hughes through O’Brien Associates for at least two years at $15,000 a month.
O’Brien became Democratic national chairman on August 30, 1968, and that same day became chairman of Humphrey’s campaign. He confirmed that he met a third time with Maheu in Las Vegas shortly after the November election and made final arrangements to begin work for Hughes on January 1, 1969.
O’Brien confirmed that he “maintained contact” with Maheu while he managed Humphrey’s campaign but said that he did not recall discussing Hughes’s attempt to take over Air West. He said that he discussed Hughes’s TWA battle with Maheu on several occasions but did not recall the plan for a congressional probe of the bankers, which Maheu said he discussed with O’Brien in a memo to Hughes dated October 9, 1968.
O’Brien also said he did not recall having arranged Maheu’s August 1968 meeting with Johnson at the LBJ Ranch, but Maheu told the Senate Watergate Committee that O’Brien set up that meeting, and Johnson’s appointments secretary Jim Jones confirmed that O’Brien arranged it. Jones recounted LBJ’s reaction in an interview.
Maheu confirmed in an interview that Hughes ordered a second million-dollar bribe to Johnson. O’Brien claimed not to recall any “direct contact” with the president in December 1968 regarding the bomb test. “It gets perilously close to suggesting that Maheu’s reports to Hughes might not have been accurate, in terms of my opinions and views and activities, and that wouldn’t have been the case,” said O’Brien. “Because if Maheu told Hughes that O’Brien says Lyndon Johnson’s view on the bomb test is this or that, I’m sure I told Bob that was the president’s position, and I wouldn’t have told him unless some effort was made to find out what the president’s position was.”
O’Brien claimed that he never discussed with Maheu any offer of money to Johnson, or indeed any political contributions at all, but Maheu told the Senate Watergate Committee that he kept O’Brien informed of “all political matters.” Maheu refused in an interview to confirm that he told O’Brien about the proposed million-dollar bribe to Johnson, as he stated he did in his memo to Hughes. “That’s none of your business,” said Maheu.
An O’Brien associate, who declined to be identified, said in an interview that O’Brien told him that Hughes had once ordered that a million dollars be given to Johnson, but that he refused to get involved.
Colin McKinlay confirmed in an interview that two Hughes representatives, Tom Bell and Jack Entratter, “tried to buy me off not to run the story about Ted Kennedy,” and also confirmed that it was Entratter who brought Kennedy to room 1895 at the Sands where the showgirl was seen by a bellhop, a room service waiter, and two detectives assigned to protect Kennedy. Entratter died in 1971, but another Sands executive corroborated McKinlay’s account in an interview.